International Journal of Developing Societies
Vol. 3, No. 1, 2014, 87-95
DOI: 10.11634/216817831403459
A Political History of Nigeria and the Crisis of Ethnicity in Nation-Building
Odeyemi, Jacob Oluwole
Department of History and International Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Ajayi Crowther University, Oyo.
E-mail: [email protected]
The virus of ethnicity has been one of the most definitive causes of social crisis, injustice, inequality and religiopolitical instability in Nigeria. Ethnicity has been perceived in general as a major obstacle to the overall
politico–economic development of the country. Nigeria is marked by underlying ethnic cleavages and interethnic fears and tensions, hence a bellicose nation. These are revealed from time to time by conflicting lobbies
at the moments of competition for shares of the national cake and political appointments to high offices,
resource control, head of political parties and ministerial positions. Losers in competitions for high national
offices often attribute their failures to ethnicity or ethnic marginalization, while winners hardly ever explained
their success in terms of the influence of ethnicity, and are therefore not gallant losers or magnanimous in
victory. The Nation’s incessant appeals to ethnicity have obviously showcased the evils inherent in the
politicization of ethnicity. Consequently, the ensuing complications of ethnicity have grossly impinged on the
development of the country in all ramifications. The paper, a historio-political venture, argues that the path was
colonially charted though; the Nigerian political elite have in complicity exacerbated ethnicity in the country.
As Nigeria warms to its centennial amalgamation birthday, the Nigerian political history is summable as a
squandered century of nationhood, a nation-building in close call, extremely in dire need of operational
reappraisals.
Key Words: Nigeria, Ethnicity, Ethnocentrism, Nation-building, colonialism
Introduction
Nigeria’s political history is intertwined between
military rule and democratic governance. The First
Republic presided over by Prime Minister, Sir
Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, with a ceremonial
President, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, lasted from October
1960 to January 1966. The regime was plagued by
antagonistic regionalism, ethnicity, declined revenues,
and bitter power struggle, and it wobbled from one
crisis to another until it was overthrown by the military
(Danfulani & Atowoju, 2012). Coincidentally, the
first coup, widely touted to have been led by Major
Patrick Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, was defectively
planned and terribly executed as plotters lacked full
grips with the consequences, and hence got consumed
by its complexities, paving the way thereby for an
uninvolved officer, General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, to
become the first military Head of State. However, the
coup had significantly compounded the incidence of
ethnicity in Nigeria. This inevitably is because both
Nzeogwu and Aguiyi-Ironsi were of Igbo extraction,
and hence, the coup (dubbed by cynics as “Igbo coup”)
and the policies of the eventual government were
undoubtedly interpreted as Igbo agenda to achieve
political ascendancy in Nigeria. Of course, it could be
conjectured that Ironsi had tactically goofed, covertly
or overtly, by decreeing the abolition of the Federal
system on 24th May, 1966 (a previous strategic
provision to stymie ethnic rivalry), for an acutely
unitary system, and secondly by disparately promoting
a number of Igbo military officers ahead of others.
Ironsi’s strategic miscalculations sent jitters down the
spines of other ethnic groups and united them against
his government. Billy J. Dudley (1967), a first
generation Nigerian political scientist, noted
categorically that the Igbo had plans for a unitary state
with the Igbo predominating in its governance.
A counter coup was hurriedly organised and
executed in July 1966, leading to the emergence of Lt.
Col. Yakubu Gowon, a self-acclaimed protector of
Nigeria’s minorities, from the North as the new Head
of State. Quite unfortunately the earlier coup had
generated serious ethnic bitterness which led to the
butchery of Igbos dwelling in the North. The ensuing
bad blood led to the Biafran secession and a civil war
to reunite the country. Danfulani & Atowoju (2012)
observed that the 1970s were marked by dramatic
changes which bordered largely on ethnicity, and
ethno-political rivalry. The civil war ended in 1970,
ISSN 2168-1783 Print/ ISSN 2168-1791Online / World Scholars
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International Journal of Developing Societies
for a short while, abating the danger of ethnicity, but
introducing the problem of post-war reconstruction,
rehabilitation and reconciliation (the 3Rs). The onus of
this paper is to critically examine some of the related
ills and proffer solutions that will ameliorate or
possibly put an end to ethnicity or the fear of ethnic
marginalization, mutual mistrust and bitter
segregations that often generate ethnic imbroglio in
Nigeria plural society. This paper will also discourage
the attitude of politicians at taking advantage of tribal
sentiment for personal gains.
Concepts, Definitions and Significance of Study
Apart from being controversial, ethnicity is a diehard
phenomenon that scholars have endlessly continued to
grapple with. A very disturbing reality is the result of
a study carried out by Banerjee and Sengupta. It
reveals that more than 10 million lives were lost
between 1945 and 1975 to ethnic militia violence
around the world (Banerjee & Sengupta, 2009). Many
scholars of the social science persuasion had
contended decades ago that ethnicity and ethnic
identifications would fade as the modernization
process of industrialization and urbanization ground
them down (Henderson, 1998). It is indeed reasonable
and convenient to conjecture that ethnic cleavages
would recede as the world advanced into postmodernity wherein modern nation-states had become
the authoritative interacting units. Of course, that is
amidst a host of other non-state actors though
influential in the course of direction of the
international system, and that is coupled with the
supposed shrinkage of the world into a global village
where tribes and tongues may differ but deemed
inconsequential.
Ethnicity as a concept is deeply related to the
general practice of alienation and identity branding
whereas branding has always characterised both intraglobal and intra-national relations, and where also,
opportunities, rights and privileges are functions of
who you are and where you are from. In recent times,
the world has witnessed the unprecedented integration
of peoples, customs, traditions and businesses in
global history and a supposedly boundless economic
opportunities offered by globalisation. The modus
operandi and other presumptions of globalization as an
anti-alienation, post-segregation strategy were
believed to be capable of narrowing or collapsing
various forms of primordial anti-progressive identities
that had thrived on such linkage factors as racial,
tribal, cultural, linguistic and religious differences. Its
ultimate was to spur a new wave of economic boom
and other opportunities for all peoples to partake,
irrespective of the forms of dichotomies. It is however
2
the contrary in that some of the world’s worst
genocidal ethnicity occurred most recently despite
modernization. The ferocity with which the Hutus
mauled the Tutsis in Rwanda, and the despicable
Serbian aggression against other groups in BosniaHerzegovina were testimonies that ethnicity is
phenomenally intractable in social scientific
calculations. Rather than waning, modernization and
other human advancements have provided new issues
that fueled ethnicity within national societies where it
has worrisomely remained a major and recurrent
guzzler of human lives. Against this background, John
le Carré had lamented in his novel – Our Game, “while
we’re pulling down economic borders, these ethnic
crazies are putting up national borders” (cited in
Spence, 1996).
Very many theorists in the fields of social science
have made authoritative submissions, particularly, on
the subject of ethnicity. Both the concepts of ethnicity
and nation-building came into social parlance at
relatively about the same period of time. While the
socio-anthropological concept of ethnicity was
reportedly premiered by the American sociologist
David Riesman in 1953 (Teshome, 2008), the period
coincided with the timely-arrival of newly
independent states in Africa when nation-building as a
concept appeared to refer to the efforts of the
concerned states towards nurturing the former colonial
territories into viable and coherent modern national
entities. Perhaps with the exceptions of Ethiopia and
Liberia, the entire continent of Africa had originally
been carved up into colonial territories by Europeans
without regard to ethnic boundaries, and regrettably,
without due considerations for their idiosyncratic
compatibility. Prior to colonialism, these ethnies had
more or less existed in political independence of one
another; hence, concern was insignificant for interethnic bickering.
Historical studies, for instance, in intergroup
relations in pre-colonial Nigeria area are quite
interesting. Though mistrustful and conflictual at
occasions, yet there were many other factors that
created some forms of cordial interdependence. Such
included trade and commerce particularly in the
exchange of such items over which there is
comparative group advantage in its production or
procurement, and which have been brought about
significantly by nature (environmental and
geographical variations). Despite such interdependence
anyway, ethnicity issues hardly arose. Intergroup
relations were also fostered by migrations, socioreligious and cultural matters, even as many had
diplomatic and deliberate friendly ties. At colonial
subjugation, intergroup relations became further
heightened but issues of ethnicity were still
insignificant since the colonies were governed by non-
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J. O. Odeyemi
Africans who also used force of arms to hold the
colonies in place as required. Ethnic rivalry was very
minimal as they willy-nilly submitted to their foreign
conquerors. Nevertheless, the(se) ethnically conflated
colonies became the cradle of modern states of Africa.
Interestingly, the two concepts are important to
nationhood in that both are mutual inhibitors. Put
differently, it is an intractable impingement case of
exclusivity in the very face of inclusivity; hence, intranational relations are bound for the frictions in multiethnic political societies. This scenario is particularly
notorious in Africa than elsewhere where stateformation initiatives were not indigenous but foreigncrafted, and nationalism activities were similarly
colonially induced. In fact, rather than conceptually
refer it as state-formation or state-building, the
modern states of Africa evolved from the deliberately
organised state-packaging or state-fabrication at the
Berlin Conference of 1884-1885. Then, European
Powers were impatient to await the natural evolution
of modern states in Africa due to the prevalent
international exigencies and strategies. Far from it that
Africa was devoid of state formation/organisation for
history is replete with African states and societies that
were thousands of years old prior to European global
conquest. Short of saying, however, that African states
were slow to integrate into the emerging international
economic/political order as a global initiative of
Europeans, it is rather that Africa was comparatively
primitive and utterly ignorant of developments around
the globe, apart from being totally unprepared to
integrate, albeit appropriately.
But then also, the term primitive may be
prejudicial to Africa. The situation may rather at the
time be described as comparative variations in stateconceptualisation between Africans and Europeans. Put
differently,
Europeans
had
a
particular
conceptualisation of the modern state that is completely
unafrican in nature. The pre-colonial Africa is
characterised by weak and fluidly states with no clearly
defined territories and borders. Whereas Europe had
settled for a sovereign, industrially prosperous and
mercantilist state system, the orientation was absolutely
different in Africa. Whereas also Europe, on the alert,
had developed a consciousness towards the systematic
management of interstate relations, Africa was yet
unaware of such critical need to organise her
international/global relations. Indeed, and with no
political ideal for the concept of sovereignty, or its
relatives, to regulate interstate relations, most African
states celebrated expansionism and aggression with
orgy. The latter was particularly a sign of strength, an
instrument of interstate relations, and a game
cherished by any capable state.
The entire continent could be imagined as a wild
circus of utter chaos and bloodletting. As far as the
issues of peace and conflict were concerned, not only
is an African state accorded fame and greatness by its
revered potentials for aggression, (which could have
been channeled into deterrent policy as world powers
do today), but often also, that acts of interstate
aggression and the attendant plunders and usurpations
at conquests were their surest industry to livelihoods,
opulence and splendor. Many state armies like the
Buganda army and Ibadan warriors were granted
license to personally plunder such items as ivory,
livestock, women, etc. during wars. The liberty to loot
had motivated the soldiers and who also were always
eager for the next war as soon as they were broke. It
was often a kind of large scale interstate armed
robberies in form. Consequently, pre-colonial Africa
was clearly a jungle in respect of interstate relations.
African states were constantly at wars that were often
nonsensical and unjust; but rather for the fun, frivolity
and aggrandizement, spoils and slave-raiding.
Boundaries were thus in a flux of shifts and
obliterations as African states collapse and
reconstitute as in a continuum, and all these were at
the reckless expense and neglect of political stability
for full continental exploration and development, and
as well, human advancement.
Europeans indeed paid in blood, money and
intellectual sweat for the exploration and claiming of
the continent for its potentials, whereas Africans were
outrightly complacent and improvident about their
future, carelessly paving the way thereby for European
imperialism. The European knowledge from the
explorations aided the Berlin partitioning of Africa
and its colonial subjugation. Little wonder thus that
Africa was stagnatory until it got caught up in
bewilderment,
absolutely
unimaginably
and
unpreparedly, in the imperial web of the West. Of
course again, it would be unfair to think that wild and
senseless wars were peculiar to Africa. Europe, Africa
and other continents have all had their Dark Age
experience at one time or the other. Europe had
however galloped out of the situation ahead of others
to channel the advancements of the entire world.
Africa was then a continent where peoples were
continually in despairing moves due either to
displacements or migrations (particularly in Southern
Africa) motivated most often by credible feelings of
insecurity. The craving for strong, peaceful, stable,
prosperous and enduring states were grossly lacking,
or at best, not yet developed in much of Africa. This is
unlike Europe where the Renaissance, centuries of
bloody wars and armistice treaties, and to cap it all, the
Industrial Revolution and Mercantilism had thought or
helped them to develop an unprecedented framework
for interstate relations, and a conceptualisation of
modern nation-states that are free, sovereign, and
contiguous; and conducive to the full unleashing of
International Journal of Developing Societies
human potentials and development in all facets. These
nation-states evolved as a move away from the
unwieldy and unregulated system of empires,
kingdoms and principalities which were the previous
units of human political organisation all over the
world.
The additional factor, thus, is that Africa was
much unprepared to integrate into the then emerging
international economic/political order in the
appropriate political unit - the nation-state. This is the
European-fashioned political unit that could interact in
the modern industrial and international society
operating within a framework of new rules of
engagement. As the world could not wait for Africa,
the Berlin partitioning of the continent into the kind of
European states became the inevitable. It simply
resulted in the world’s greatest border-engineering in
which borders as European prefabs were imported and
embedded in Africa. Pal Kolstø (1999), aptly
described such scenario, as the movement of borders
across settlements. Very importantly thus, the mode of
formation of African modern states was itself the
contagion of ethnicity. However, the incidence of
ethnicity is not the direct consequence of either the
mode of formation or the nature of the modern state.
Ethnic animosities, rivalries and uprisings are rather
the bye-products of the kind of inter-ethnic politics
and power play that ethnics’ cohabitation generated in
the modern states. Smith (1996,) thus writes of ethnic
politics as that which is characterised by endemic
instabilities, unpredictability and acute passions.
Professor Nnoli (1978), an authority on the
subject, described ethnicity essentially as that which
exists only within a political society that consists of
diverse ethnic groups; where such groups are
characterized by a common consciousness of being
one in relation to other relevant groups. It “tends to be
exclusive in membership particularly on linguistic and
cultural grounds while being rejective of nonmembers in social relations, hence, social relations are
often conflictual. What then are ethnic groups?
Without going to its historical origins as that is already
well-done, for instance by Teshome (2008) and
Salamone (1997), both whose works are highly
significant towards understanding the deep-seatedness
of ethnicity in Africa, the term ‘ethnic group’ is used
to describe a quasi-national kind of ‘minority group’
within the State (Banerjee & Sengupta, 2009). Nnoli
defines an ethnic group as “social formations
distinguished by the communal character of their
boundaries. The relevant factor may be language,
culture, or both” (Nnoli, 1978). In order to distinguish
itself from other similar groups, ethnic groups promote
an ideology that … asserts a common ancestor for all
members, a common set of values, culture, behaviour
and ideology, (Salamone 1997).
4
But then, as observed by Salamone, ethnic groups are
political, economic and social action groups formed
for a particular purpose; that is, to obtain something
that is more easily attained by belonging to an ethnic
group than as an individual or as a member of some
other ethnic group. This is why this work prefers to
adopt Abner Cohen’s’ operational definition of an
ethnic group as ”a collectivity of people who share
some patterns of normative behaviour and; form a
part of larger population interacting with people from
other collectivities within the framework of a social
system" (cited in Teshome 2008).
The essence of this ethnic interaction, as posited
by Teshome, explains essentially why Ethnic groups
give support (through belongingness) and solidarity to
their members to counterbalance the alienation
prevalent in the modern world. Basically then, an
ethnic group is potentially a lobby group. Quite
essentially, the tendencies of ethnic groups to rally,
give support, and solidarize, in order to mitigate acts
of alienation, prejudices or marginalization from other
ethnic groups, and quite importantly to maximize
possible gains in any ethnic interaction become the
genesis of ethnicity in social systems. Thus, the term
ethnicity could be viewed as the characterization of
ethnic relations per time in any multi-ethnic social
system, and which usually are frictional and opposing.
Ethnicity, Politics and Nation-Building
Ethnicity as a relational product is quintessentially
adversarial. Two reasons are responsible. The first, as
observed by Matteo Fumagalli (2007), though in
different context but very applicable to African social
systems by its peculiar nature of state-formation, is
that millions of citizens found themselves, almost
overnight, in the new condition being labelled or
viewed as minority. However, the tag ‘minority’
denotes the presence of some sorts of critical
competitions in which the former is delicately pitched
against a majority other with a leverage of number
among other factors. Multi-ethnic states are
consequently in a flux of nagging competitions. This
is quite particular to African states where there is
heavy dependance on public resources for virtually
every form of sustenance, more so that the private
sector is less developed.
A major blunder committed by early postindependence leaders in their state-building effort is
that the state is paternalistically conceived. The state
became an omniprovider of an overwhelming plethora
of services, many of which could have been efficiently
provided by the private sector. Access to the state’s
(finite) resource base is thus crucial to the competing
groups. This explains why the attempt to privatize
5
J. O. Odeyemi
certain public utilities, infrastructures and services
have met with stiff public resistance, whereas most
African states are already overwhelmed and incapable
of further services. As Teshome has observed,
ethnicity could be the basis for the unequal treatment
of people and it may be the cause of ethnocentrism and
prejudices against members of other ethnic groups.
The second, which derives from the first, is a function
of several factors. The fact that the (African) state is in
a constant scenario of political competitions is an
indication of the economic fact that the resources
available for allocation is also never surplus. It is
indeed the scarcity of resources that inevitably
necessitates, if not aggravates, the politics of (its)
allocation.
The stakes of politics are too high. Politics
extends beyond mere governmental organisation and
operation of the state and its institutions. Politics is
critical and determinative of people’s fate or fortune in
life. Without an iota of doubt, it’s a functional
determination of who prospers or perishes, who lives
or dies, who is favoured or marginalized and who is
famed or defamed. Politics could be used to engender
development and underdevelopment, depending on
who is at the winning end of power play. The politics
of allocation essentially is about competing to get
some scarce benefits from government. Such include
health, wealth, scholarships and education, public
utilities, infrastructural facilities, loans and grants,
livelihoods, fame, respect, land, resource control,
security, contracts, import license, influence, skills,
and e.t.c. How much that one could get is a critical
function of where one belongs in the endgame of
politics. Two classical definitions of politics are
succinct here. Politics for Harold Lasswell, though
bitterly and in the ordinariness, is about who gets what,
when and how. A technical interpretation of that is
David Easton’s definition that politics is the
authoritative allocation of value. Thus, a synergetic
fusion of the two, that politics is the authoritative
determination of who gets what, when and how, brings
forth a crucial case of fate determination.
The critical reason why people or groups struggle
for governmental power is because it is essentially at
the decision end of politics of allocation. Therefore,
intergroup competitions for the authoritative
allocation of value in multiethnic states are inevitable
and vicious. They are usually the root cause of interethnic civil uprisings. Nnoli has thus rightly argued
that it is not inter-ethnic contact between groups that
breeds conflicts; rather it is the extent of competing
claims that are associated with the economic and
political problems of modern nation states (Nnoli,
1978). However and notwithstanding the status of
resource availability in terms of scarcity or surplusage,
the politics of allocation may become the vulturous
politics of enrichment to the group(s) with the upper
hand in the interplay of power politics, whereby
greater opportunities of amassing wealth are
effectively, deliberately and greedily cornered by the
dominant group(s). The history and politics of revenue
allocation in Nigeria clearly depicted this scenario. At
Independence when Nigeria’s economy relied solely
on agricultural exports, the revenue sharing formula
based on the principle of derivation was adopted. By
this principle, federal revenues were distributed to the
federating units based on the total or some proportion
of certain taxes assumed to have been paid by the
citizens of the units. Two of Nigeria’s three units then,
the Western and Northern Regions (also with two
dominant ethnic stocks – Yoruba and Hausa-Fulani)
tremendously got enriched under this principle
through their exportation of cocoa and groundnuts
(then in very high demand in the international market)
and other cash crops. The Eastern Region was then less
endowed and thus profited less comparatively.
Shortly after, oil was discovered in stupendous
commercial quantity in the Eastern Region. The instreaming petrodollars soon and far outstripped total
revenues from agroexports prompting thereby the
successful agitation by the same two chagrined regions
for Nigeria to adopt a new revenue sharing formula
that is either based on the principle of need or the
principle of even development/national interest.
Revenue allocation here is either based on the size of
the population in an area, or on the basis of public
expenditure deemed to be in the best interest of the
nation as a whole. The two former regions still profited
significantly in this new arrangement as they
contained major population centers of the country.
And that is in addition to the fact that the political and
bureaucratic elites from these regions are also some of
the most influential in the authoritative allocation of
values and the determination of deeming issues of
national interest. The politics of allocation is jealously
ridiculous in Nigeria that even a non-oil state would
temptingly agitate for similar federal oil-related
compensations to oil-producing states, for instance, to
cater for environmental oil spillages, or at least would
create spurious excuses to partake of similar federal
largesse. Geo-political zones that are unable to benefit
from certain largesse may agitate to discourage its
allocation to the needy zones.
It is also not unnatural that people play the unfair
politics of domination in their authoritative
determination of who gets what, when and how. Put
differently, the politics of allocation may also
transform into politics of deprivation, or at terrible
times the politics of marginalization. Occasionally at
moments, with reckless abandon, it could transform
into politics of (organised) oppression or
extermination. All of these dimensions of politics, for
International Journal of Developing Societies
instance, were remarkably and progressively the
experience of Jews, regrettably at the hands of the
Nazis. The Tutsis of Rwanda similarly and recently
shared these political experiences. In BosniaHerzegovina in the early 1990s, the actual and the
perceived desire to dominate or resist domination led
the three major ethnic groups - the Serbs, the Bosniaks
(Muslims Slavs) and the Croats, to fight a vicious war
that resulted in one of Europe’s worst post-Cold War
humanitarian tragedies, during which thousands got
hoarded into concentration camps, displaced, tortured,
raped or utterly massacred. It is thus not far-fetched
why ethnic groupings and group politics are
fundamental and diehard in many states, particularly
in multi-ethnic and post-colonial situations. The stakes
of politics are better obtained by belonging to an ethnic
group than as an individual or as a member of some
other ethnic group. By essence thus, ethnic relations
cannot but be innately adversarial in group contentions
for scarce resources, and even for crucial subsistence.
Quite remarkably, there is the scholastic consensus
that ethnicity and ethnic nationalism is critical to statemaking as both generate solidarity and garner popular
participation of people in politics, yet, ethnicity, by its
adversarial nature, is contraindicated to the concept of
nation-building. The aim of this paper again is not to
get involved in the debate on the theories and
conceptualizations of nation-building as it is also a
normative issue. Rather and as earlier posited, this
work would adopt preferably the idea that nationbuilding refers to the efforts of post-colonial states
towards nurturing the former colonial territories into
viable and coherent modern national entities.
Essentially thus, nation-building critically aims at the
forging or framing of a national identity and the
unification of peoples within the state in order to attain
significant forms of stability and endurance, which
will in turn ensure its prosperous viability.
Nation-building, includes the deliberate creation
of national paraphernalia and symbols of unity such as
national flag, national anthem, national day and
national investments/holdings, etc. At a deeper level,
national identity needed to be deliberately constructed
by molding different groups into a nation, especially
since colonialism had used divide and rule tactics to
maintain its domination (Wikipedia, 2013). Nationbuilding involves the intricate inclusion of all groups,
towards fostering social cohesion and harmony as
against the exclusivity and rancorous nature of
ethnicity. The opening phrase of the first Nigerian
national anthem, ‘Nigeria, we hail thee, our own dear
native land, though tribes and tongues may differ, in
brotherhood we stand’, is a pointer to this. The initial
effort at nation-building in Nigeria thus aimed at
forging a brotherhood, vis-à-vis, a nationhood of the
diverse ethnies, organised in unity for a common
6
purpose within the state. In other words, social
harmony is a critical ingredient of nation-building.
However, the attainment of social harmony may of
essence be antithetical to the adversarial nature of
inter-ethnic politics in post-colonial states where every
ethnic group is most tendentiously hostile to
nonmembers. The pertinent question is how do multiethnic states achieve social harmony in the very face
of ethnic politics, rivalries and adversities involved in
the competition for scarce resources and the high
stakes of politics? Undoubtedly, nation-building is an
uphill struggle in multiethnic states, and it is only
within these contexts that the political history and the
crises of ethnicity in Nigeria can be understood and
dissected. It is equally significant to understanding the
political situation and future of the Nigerian state.
Ethnicity – Origin and Impact on Nigerian
Nationality
Thomas Hodgkin (1960), describes the Nigerian past
as many pasts, not one – the past histories of the
various peoples and civilizations which constitute
modern Nigeria. By this is meant that Nigeria, as we
know it today, is a conflation of several ethnic
nationalities that have coexisted as one nation. A
remarkable aspect of their collective history is that the
parts of these nationalities were linked at many points
and over several periods of time in myths of origin,
commercial activities across borders, crafts, marriage,
trade, religions, and other issues that welded them into
a unified entity (Babawale, 2007). Notwithstanding
Babawale’s submission suggesting the prevalence of
boisterous inter-group relations among peoples in the
pre-colonial Nigeria area, the various nationalities
could yet be rightly described as having peculiar
values and orientations, idiosyncrasies and traditions,
which in many instances were diametrical and
antagonistic by modus vivendi and modus operandi.
But these never mattered in so far that they were
(often) politically independent of one another. In other
words, the disparate ethnies were free, sovereign,
contiguous and often cooperative. Colonialism came
to alter this status quo inter alia. Colonialism had
initially coalesced the disparate peoples along two
geo-political zones - the Northern Nigeria
Protectorate and the Colony/Protectorate of Southern
Nigeria, with separate colonial Governors. At that
stage, each geo-colonial zone had relatively contained
peoples with trado-cultural affinities; hence, prospects
for ethnic bickering were insignificant.
But in a move that distinguished him as the author
of ethnicity in Nigeria, Frederick Lugard, the first
British Governor-General of the Colony and
Protectorate of Nigeria (Dec. 1913 – Nov. 1918)
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J. O. Odeyemi
eventually and insensitively forced the various tribal
national groups and the Protectorates to amalgamate in
1914, without a proper roundtable agreement. This is
aptly described as the ‘deliberation deficit’ notable
with and undermining many polities in transition, and
by which is meant, ‘the absence from a given social
formation of a common ethos that frames the debate
on issues of general concern’ (Obadare, 2004). Of
course then, the disparate peoples of pre-colonial
Nigeria in sublime ignorance, and indeed, generations
away from being aware of the economic and sociopolitical developments around the globe, were in
transit to a kind of nation-state that had never crossed
their
imagination.
Several
world-changing
developments such as the rise of sovereign states and
an international order in the post-westphalian sense,
and as well the Industrial Revolutions and
Mercantilism have taken place, resulting in the
evolution of modern industrial societies, the kind that
were then grossly absent in Africa. The European
conquerors of the world had considered it their
manifest destiny to drag and mold the entire world
along these modern patterns. This would inevitably
result in the regrouping of peoples and the reshaping
of primitive states into modern nation-states.
Of consequence also, it had been in the plan and
process of the British Government, as a matter of their
national interest and colonial convenience, to coalesce
the two colonies as one. The British Government was
prejudicially aware also that the resultant nation would
be a bed of nails for strange bedfellows with the full
awareness that the fundamental differences in values
and sensibilities will certainly ever pitch the people
against one another. What however mattered to Britain
then was the sustenance and even the furtherance of
her unrivalled international prestige, power and
colonial expediency, and not, though importantly, the
consequences of the eventual clash of sensibilities and
values (and may be of civilizations) of peoples whose
immediate past generations had earlier been forcibly
bundled and fettered unto slave ships to farm
European plantations in the Americas.
Britain had claimed the fame for building the
greatest global empire on which the sun never sets, and
may thus still wish to experiment with building huge
artificial nations many times her own size. But Britain
never needed to compound the future by merging the
two geo-colonial entities at the time since each was
already bigger than most European states and were
already viable as modern states. However, Britain
could afford to be careless and unsentimental to the
eventual plight of the colonial peoples, for after all, the
colony itself, like many others, was to double-serve
importantly as an asset for international diplomatic
and military leverage, and very importantly as well, a
business facility for the resource-depleted British
home industries in the aftermath of the second
Industrial Revolution and the abolition of TransAtlantic Slave Trade. The amalgamation was not
necessarily the objective building of a workable and
beneficial modern polity to organize the locals for
their development and prosperous futures in the
evolving international order.
Thus, in the foregoing, the amalgamation of these
two colonies is a special assignment that requires
ruthlessness, audaciousness and atrociousness,
particularly as it is bound to meet with resistance by a
good section of the locals. As such the mission would
require a crazily ruthless fellow with a pedigree for
reckless disregard for decorum and scruples. Of all the
British colonial officials on field at the time, perhaps
the only one with such credential and excellent
profiling was Frederick Lugard. With a background
career in military and mercenary professionalism, he
had been previously hired or commissioned, most
times successfully, to secure trade routes, treaties, or
territories for imperial British companies, establish
British predominance and sovereignty in colonies and
other disputed territories, commandeer troops to
decisively quell colonial hot spots (even at the forfeit
of entire towns to total destruction), and to protect
British interests particularly by checkmating the
encroachment and aggression of other colonial powers
across much of Africa. To achieve this record, he was
by no means a gentleman, but a thoroughbred
Machiavellian to whom the end only justifies the
means.
He was completely unlike William Macgregor
who governed the Lagos colony at about the time
when Lugard first governed the protectorate of
Northern Nigeria between 1900 and 1904. MacGregor
trained and practiced extensively as a doctor before
veering into colonial administration, and as a
governor, he mixed with all ranks of people and
listened to what they wanted (Wikipedia 2013). The
value systems and orientations of these two colonial
officials, particularly towards human administration
were completely different and may have been dictated
by the nature of their first career and profession. A
doctor is trained to love, care and save life, but a
soldier is contrarily trained to, perhaps rapidly hate
and destroy life. Their styles of governance are
therefore different as well as their approach to issues.
The difference, by no exaggeration, is that between a
manager and a bully of men. William Macgregor was
a man given to amity and roundtable, tact,
perseverance and much avoidance of bloodshed in
accomplishing a state of law and order, and this is
effortful and painstaking considering human
complexities. By all means he was a social democrat
and a liberal administrator. For his sterling efforts in
most colonies where he governed, MacGregor won
International Journal of Developing Societies
numerous awards and medals of excellence in service
to humanity from non-governmental organisations,
first-rate academic institutions and the state
(Wikipedia, 2013). On the other hand, the impatient
Frederick Lugard believed almost passionately in the
easy-use of force to compel obedience, law and order.
He was a maximum ruler, and outrightly a nondemocrat who thought that disparate peoples could be
forcibly glued together in a polity irrespective of
fundamental divisive issues. Lugard notably won
honours only from, and in service to the state, (the
ultimate of which was a barony), mainly and obviously
in recognition of his noteworthy contributions to
building the vast British Empire on which the sun
never sets.
Furthermore, one of the two men, both with vast
experience in colonial administration, and particularly
in the concerned area would soon have to be
commissioned to merge the two colonies as one
anyway. However, the amalgamation at hand was
obviously bound to generate controversy among many
locals hence it is no mission for the gentle and
understanding at heart and a man with the listening
hear like MacGregor. Rather, an enforcer, a bully with
a no-holds-barred steely heart would preferably be
appropriate. It is thus not surprising that few years later
in 1912; Lugard was sent back as Governor-General to
accomplish the unpalatable amalgamation of the two
colonies. The move clearly generated controversy in
the south where it was opposed by a large section of
the political class and the media. But because he based
his rule on a military system, the amalgamation was
by military fiat. And by spending 50% of each year in
England, leaving behind non-authoritative subordinates
in charge of administration, Lugard ensured that there
were no listening ears to the protests of the antiamalgamation groups which dissipated with time.
Once the amalgamation was completed, issues
became a completely different ball game in the
eventual entity, and the road map for ethnicity had
been fully launched. Ethnicity became exploited as
noted in the subsequent British colonial policy of
divide and rule that was imposed on the peoples
obviously for colonial expediency. Over the years this
has continually degenerated into inter ethno-religious
suspicion, tribal segregation, hostility and antagonism
among various communal groups (Oni, 2008). These
anomalies have done a colossal damage to the
Nigerian political system. Ethnicity has been
perceived in general as a major obstacle to the overall
politico–economic development of the country (Oni,
2008). Indeed, Nigeria has wasted a whole century
since the amalgamation on a wild-goose chase of
nation-building as indigenous political elites
tortuously strived to hold as one, the deeply
fragmented state. Oscar Onwudiwe recalled that Chief
8
Obafemi Awolowo sadly submitted that “…that
amalgamation will ever remain the most painful injury
a British government inflicted on Southern Nigeria”
(Onwudiwe, 2011).
Tactically, the Colonial Office in London had
given freedom to its officers to pragmatically govern
the colonies as they deemed fit based on the situation
on ground. Unlike the French colonial policy that was
highly centralised and direct-rule in form, and whose
ultimate control was vested in the Minister for
Colonies at Paris, the British colonial policy have been
characterised variously as one of pragmatism,
empiricism, or even opportunism. Unlike the French,
the British were less interested in the effort to make
their colonial policy consistent and intelligible. British
colonial policy was governed more by precedent than
by principle, and was also less centralised than French
rule. Colonial Governors were allowed considerable
freedom within the framework of general guidelines
formulated by the colonial office in London to initiate
policies suitable to their respective territories. Even
within each of the British colonies, officers
subordinate to the Governor were given a high degree
of autonomy in handling colonial administrative
matters, (which is another principle of indirect rule).
The Lugardist reckless exploitation of ethnicity for
colonial expediency was sanctifiable in the above
context, and ever since then, Nigeria has become a
huge laboratory for political and other forms of social
science. Politicians, bureaucrats, technocrats,
researchers and intellectuals, both local and foreign,
have experimented, conjectured or concocted all forms
of ideas to make it survive and thrive as a modern
socio-political entity.
Certainly, nationhood has been pretty difficult
and delicate due to the presence of some seemingly
irreconcilable differences that were toxigenic to
national growth. Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was
absolute when he declared, “We are different in too
many ways”. He said elsewhere, ‘the people are
different in every way, including religion, custom,
language and aspirations…”, and in the
acknowledgement of this fact Sir Ahmadu Bello
describes the amalgamation as ‘the mistake of 1914’.
Chief Obafemi Awolowo in blunt derision had
described Nigeria as “merely a geographical
expression” that lumped together an arbitrary
collection of disparate groups following colonial rule.
But despite these scathing criticisms from these
foremost pioneering elites, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, a
contemporary of theirs was rather hopeful that
something could still be created out of the nothingness,
hence for him he enjoined, “Nigeria is now a political
reality, let us bury our differences and build it
together” (Onwudiwe, 2011).
9
J. O. Odeyemi
From the above it is glaring that Nigeria, though a
huge national enterprise, had suffered the
poliomyelitic viral attack of ethnicity from its colonial
embryo leading to a defective birth, hence it became
the crippled giant, to borrow from Eghosa Osaghae
(1998). But when the fundamental differences came to
a crisis point in 1966 and eventually in a secessionist
civil war, Francois Duvalier, then President of Haiti
otherwise known as ‘Papa Doc.’, wisely declared on
March 22, 1969, though in Haitian declaration of
support for the breakaway Biafra that “Federal Nigeria
has never since her independence shown the
distinctive mark of a united nation. It has been
impossible for her to silence tribal rivalries – to
achieve that mixture of ethnic/cultural blend required
to forge National Unity” (Duvalier is cited in
Onwudiwe, 2011). At the end of the civil war which
the Federal Government won in 1970, Gen. Yakubu
Gowon declared that to keep Nigeria one is a task that
must be done. But then, and more than four decades
on, experience has revealed that the task is indeed
arduous and perhaps futile-bound. It is observed that
the failure of the various tribal groups to negotiate
their amalgamation is the root of many tribal
wranglings and agitations, ethnic hues and cries of
marginalization, greed, controversial and inconclusive
censuses, vote rigging, stagnated economic growth
and nepotism in Nigeria, and not necessarily its huge
territorial and population size with its multifarious
ethnic groupings.
The Gains and Pains of Nigeria’s Ethno-Political
Plurality
That Nigeria is composed of many different ethnic
groupings should have been of tremendous blessings
and strength towards nation-building and the speedy
development of the nation. Barring intrigues and
political play, its multi-ethnic composition ought to
bequeath the country, firstly, with a syncretic array of
rich cultures and etiquettes for a well-mannered
national society; secondly, a sea of progressive
political ideas and thoughts that could, and ought to
fast-track national development; and lastly, an
inexhaustible manpower base to actualize its
economic potentials and development. However and
on the contrary, this same factor that ought to
strengthen Nigeria has actually posed the greatest
challenge to nation building. Ethnic strife has plagued
Nigeria from political independence. Nigeria kickstarted as a Federation of three regions with a weak
center at colonial independence in 1960, that is, the
Northern, Western and Eastern Regions, each of which
was strong enough, both in land mass and population,
to be an independent nation (Danfulani & Atowoju,
2012).
It stands corrected, quite astonishingly, that the
period of Political Regionalism in Nigeria perhaps
marked the best period for the country. Regional
politicians had carefully harnessed and transformed
the natural endowments and potentials of their peoples
into actual developmental gains, which were the
veritable templates and channels for real sustainable
wealth creation and economic development. It is
affirmable that Regionalism brought out the best in the
politicians as ingenious and developmental
programmes were pursued to competitively excel their
respective areas. That, for instance, marked the period
when the Western Region with an agro-based
economy under the Premiership of late Chief Obafemi
Awolowo blazed the trail that brought global fame to
Nigeria as the first in Africa to establish a Television
Broadcasting Service. That singular act elevated
Africa very closely to America and Europe as early
continents to enjoy the technological breakthrough of
telecast. The other novelty was the construction of the
first ultramodern Stadium christened the Liberty
Stadium (now named after him), and also the very first
skyscraper in the country, the Cocoa House.
Rather than being poverty-stricken, the people of
this region prospered economically and were well
educated at state’s expense. The current disparity in
levels of education among the peoples of Nigeria is
traceable to this period. The people of the South-West
remained the most educated, organised, and
progressive and intellectually sound in Nigeria. These
achievements further affirmed the assertion in the
immediate above that the multiple ethnic groupings in
Nigeria ought to be of tremendous blessings, assets
and strength towards the development of the nation if
they all had purposely in concert harnessed their
diverse endowments and resources. However and after
all, politics at the national level was deeply fragmented
along regional and ethnic fault lines, bogging down
thereby any national process to move the nation
forward. Fundamental differences in values had made
leading ethnic groups to be parochial in developmental
pursuits, and this at the expense of the nation at large.
But earlier than the institution of Regionalism and
even political independence in Nigeria had the
minority ethnic groups or nationalities strongly felt
that the Federal structure of governance was inimical
to their interest, especially as it did not provide their
people with maximum opportunity for individual or
collective development. This informed the setting up
of the Henry Willink’s Commission on September 26,
1957 to inquire into the fears of the minorities with a
view to allaying the minorities’ apprehension. The
Willink Commission was of the opinion that the fears
expressed by the minorities were indeed genuine, but
International Journal of Developing Societies
did not believe that the fears could be removed by
mere creation of more states. For example, the Edos in
Western Nigeria, the Tivs in the Middle Belt of
Northern Region and the Calabar, Ogoja and Rivers
peoples of the Eastern region had earlier agitated for
the creation of more states. But the parties in power in
the various regions, with the exception of the Action
Group (AG) in the West had continually opposed the
creation of more states (Danfulani & Atowoju, 2012).
Willink’s Commission emphasized that the states
would not be viable and that new reigns would create
new minority problems. Therefore, it favoured the
entrenchment of fundamental human rights to allay the
fears of the minorities. It also recommended a Unified
Police Force for Nigeria under the control of the
Federal Government. The Commission also
recommended the establishment of minority areas and
special areas to speed up socio–economic development
of these areas (Alonge, 2005). The submission of Sir
Henry Willink’s commission was a major landmark in
the management of minority/majority issues in Nigeria.
The recommended actions were far-reaching because
the Commission assumed that subsequent changes in
the political scene would adequately address the issues
at stake. The Commission posited that the fears
expressed before it were on certain assumptions that
voting would always follow the lines of the present
major groupings, and that the majority would always
seek to use power to their exclusive advantages. Given
the pluralistic nature of Nigeria, it was generally
accepted that the country would be better governed as
a federal rather than a unitary system of government.
It is pertinent, however, to note that the minorities’
request for their ethnic home states which the
Willink’s Commission initially turned down became
realised during and after the Nigerian Civil war.
Dudley, (1967), reported that Middle Belt soldiers,
essentially Tiv, (who then constituted the bulk of the
Federal Army,) brought sufficient pressure on
Northern Representatives to a conference on Nigeria’s
future, summoned by General Yakubu Gowon, to
influence them to move for a united Nigeria composed
of ethnic states.
The political structure of the country has ever
remained contentious. The three main ethnic group
players in Nigerian politics are the Hausa/Fulani, Igbo
and the Yoruba – along with their submerged
supporter – ethnic minorities. These three main ethnic
groups have given rise to, and embraced three ethnic
associational blocs especially between 1999 and 2000.
The ethnic socio-political blocs are the Afenifere
Group for the Yoruba of South-Western Nigeria, the
Arewa Group for the Hausa/Fulani stock of the
Northern Nigeria and the Ohaneze Ndigbo of SouthEastern Nigeria. These groups compete for supremacy
in the country. The Ijaw National Congress is another
10
minority but prominent socio-cultural organisation
fast becoming a political umbrella for its ethnic
members. The Ijaw, together with a number of other
minority tribes like Urhobo and Ogoni in the oil-rich
Niger Delta states have substantially succeeded in
agitating, through the threats and actual utility of
insurgent activities, for a re-introduction of federal
revenue sharing by derivation principle to secure more
funding for their home states. The Fourth Republic
regime of President Olusegun Obasanjo actually
reintroduced a partial implementation of the revenue
sharing formula based on principle of derivation for oil
producing states in Nigeria in which 13% of oil
revenues are ploughed back into the oil states based on
the proportion of oil explored from each state.
Although these oil-inspired ethnic groups are still
agitating for far greater percentage shares of oil
revenues, the current 13% implementation has placed
Niger Delta states enviously far above others in federal
revenue shares.
The Nigerian Political Elite and Ethno-Political
Sentiment
There are two levels at which ethnicity has been used
in Nigeria’s electoral politics. First, it has been used
by the elite to keep themselves in political office by
playing and preying on the ignorance and the fears of
the poverty stricken majority of their people. Thus, the
elite use the ethnic factor to retain themselves in office
as political leaders, directors or managers of National
Corporations and Parastatals by making false claims
of representing their ethnic groups. Even when they do
not perform well in political office, they deceive the
people by whipping up ethnic sentiments; raising fears
and tensions of the threat that would be posed to their
ethnic group if other groups should gain political
ascendancy. A typical example was the Second
Republic’s allegation against Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe,
who was accused of not paying tax and, instead of
refuting or confirming the allegation, he lampooned
his accusers with a counter-allegation that he was
being victimized because of his Igbo ethnic origin
(Babawale, 2007).
The case of northern leaders becomes very
instructive here. Many of them have not been known
to make any difference to the living conditions of their
people in spite of their domination of the national
political terrain and the big monthly windfall derived
from the Federal Government Allocations for the
development of their states (Atowoju, 2012). Northern
leaders like Alhaji Shehu Shagari and Col. Abubakar
Umar have at different times condemned this attitude
of northern leaders. Indeed, Col. Umar once made the
point that in spite of Northern dominance of political
11
J. O. Odeyemi
power, the North has the largest number of beggars in
the country (Babawale, 2007). The second level at
which ethnicity has been used is that the politicization
of ethnicity has made many Nigerians to have less
confidence in the Nigerian state than they have in their
ethnic or communal associations. The level of
corruption and pillage that goes on within the state
apparatus is reflective of the elite’s loss of confidence
in the Nigerian project. A good number of those who
steal money from the state or federal purse without
qualms are known to jealously protect their communal
association’s money when put in their custody. As
Claude Ake (1990) puts it:
Most Nigerians confront the state not as a public
force but as an alien a hostile coercive power. This is
all the more so because the Nigerian state, lacking
autonomy, is immersed in the class struggle and is
conspicuously a state of the few against the many,
because the Nigerian state tendentially appears as
irrelevant of hostile, a critical condition for the transfer
of loyalties to ecumenical levels is removed. Nigerians
embraced ethnic identity all the more. The ethnic
groups have been emotionally and materially
supportive of their members and do not rely on
coercion.
In periods of election, violence erupts once there
are suspicions that a member of a particular ethnic
group will lose out. State property is destroyed and
lives are often lost. The case of the 1964 federal
elections, which had a large dose of ethnicity-related
violence, readily comes to mind. In 1983, violence
erupted in several parts of the country because of real
and imagined threats of marginalization by certain
ethnic groups. This problem was reenacted in 1993
when there was almost a nationwide violence that
degenerated into inter-ethnic rivalry as a result of the
annulment of the June 12, 1993 Presidential Election.
The election adjudged the freest / fairest election ever
held in Nigeria, produced Chief M.K.O. Abiola, a
Yoruba, as the President that was never to be, as he
died in mysterious circumstance in military custody.
To assuage his ethnic group, the northern elites
redeemed Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, a fellow
prominent Yoruba, from an earlier incarceration over
an alleged coup plot, to become the civilian president
between 1999 and 2007. Umaru Musa Yar’Adua that
succeeded him from the north as President could not
hold power for too long due to his terminal illness. His
deputy, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, an Ijaw man
constitutionally took the reins of power from
Yar’Adua barely two years after. The North has ever
since resented his rulership with deadly ethnoreligious cum political insurgency by the boko haram
group (Jama’atu Ahlus-Sunnah Lidda’Awati Wal
Jihad, “people committed to the propagation of the
Prophet’s teachings and Jihad”).
Conclusion and Recommendations
This paper specifically considers ethnicity and ethnopolitical crises in Nigeria’s history vis-à-vis the crises
of development. The structure and dynamics of
contemporary Nigeria’s socio-political life provide an
appropriate framework for understanding the politics
of competitive/conflictual inter-ethnic relations in the
country. In summary, the growing ethnicity and ethnonationalism exacerbated by communally-driven
discriminatory policies of the colonial administration
and the various post-independence regional, state and
federal governments and their elite cohorts (Oni,
2008), have largely promoted the pains of ethnicity
rather than appropriating the beauty of our cultural,
religious and ethical diversity for the development of
the country, economically, politically and socially.
The cumulatively divisive impact of ethnicity in
Nigeria over the decades, has constantly rendered
nation-building experiment in the Nigerian Federalism
most difficult. Indeed this process has been, till date,
such a woeful failure. The area that ultimately came to
be called ‘Nigeria’ literally the brainchild of British
colonialism, has therefore, been variously and
disdainfully
characterized
by administrators,
politicians and historians as a political aberration, with
few credentials and potentials for ever becoming a
modern nation–state. To J.P. Clerk, Nigeria is the
proverbial land of no tomorrow. The intractability of
political instability engendered by ethnicity in Nigeria
has made some American political analysts in 2005 to
doubt the survivability of Nigeria beyond the year
2015, an idea that Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, the then
Nigerian President, dismissed as diabolical benchmark.
The Federal Republic of Nigeria is the most
populous and the richest black state in the world
(Okadigbo, 1989). Nigeria is the 8th largest oil
producer in the world, the largest in Africa, sixth in
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
(OPEC), fifth largest supplier to the United States and
the most endowed oil producer in sub- Saharan Africa.
The contributions of the oil industry to Nigeria’s
foreign exchange earnings cannot be overemphasized
(Ozoemenam, 2012). However, Nigeria has remained
a country with political unrests, social disorders,
economic instability, ethnic and religious violence,
insurgent activities in the Niger-Delta aimed at the
jugular of Nigeria’s economy via the disruption of oil
flows and championed by the Movement for the
Emancipation of the Niger-Delta (MEND), and lately,
a thriving kidnap-for-ransom industry, and lastly, a
deadly Islam linked terrorism, spearheaded by the
Boko Haram.
Development defies an easy or one sentence
definition. From certain perspectives a developed
society is one in which the Gross National Product or
International Journal of Developing Societies
per capital income experience sustained growth. Other
definitions stress the ability of the people to lead a
modern or civilized existence through access to such
facilities as good roads, food, health, water, and
education. This has been termed the Basic Needs
approach. For other scholars, development implies
equitable distribution of goods and services, labeled
the redistribution with growth theory by Hollis
Chenery et.al, in their book Redistribution with
Growth (Ajuonu & Uchenna, 2004). This paper agrees
with the Redistribution Theory of Hollis Chenery and
co as the appropriate developmental policy for the
Nigerian pluralistic society. Development in Nigeria
must, therefore, necessarily include equitable
distribution of its common wealth and electoral
positions without prejudice to ethnic jingoism or
religious bigotry. Throughout the country, there must
be quick reduction or total eradication of malnutrition,
poverty, illiteracy, disease, electoral malpractices,
unemployment, insurgencies, corruption, ethnic
militancy and provision of infrastructural amenities,
avoidance of political marginalization and oppression,
mutual respect for people from other ethnic groups,
and appreciation of fundamental human right.
Ethnicity in Nigeria’s electoral politics should play a
positive role in its polity and cultural heritage. The
issue of power rotation should be faithfully adhered to
as an effort to develop a supranational Nigeria identity.
Other steps will include the pursuit of policies that will
attend to the welfare of the teeming population who
will reciprocate by seeing the state as a friend and no
longer as an alien institution that is irrelevant to their
existential needs.
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